BICS, a global provider of wholesale carrier services, today announced the launch of its remote peering solution - an affordable way for smaller communication service providers to expand their network footprint. The BICS remote peering service follows a recent reseller agreement with AMS-IX (Amsterdam Internet Exchange), one of the world's largest internet exchanges with a total of over 1,200 connected ports.

The use of smartphones, broadband devices and other services such as video streaming, constantly increases the demand for capacity. The Cisco Visual Networking Index (VNI) estimates that global mobile data traffic will increase nearly 11-fold between 2013 and 2018. Mobile data traffic is predicted to grow at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 61 percent from 2013 to 2018, reaching 15.9EB (exabytes) per month by 2018[1]. Internet Service Providers (ISPs) and communications providers worldwide are expanding their networks to accommodate this growing traffic.

Peering agreements, where ISPs reciprocally provide connectivity to each other's customers, have been a popular approach among ISPs to extend the reach of their networks for a number of years. The BICS remote peering solution builds on the success of this model, offering ISPs access to exchange points across its own extensive transport infrastructure. By utilising the BICS network, ISPs can now peer without a physical presence at the peering point, offering their own customers access to larger networks without the expense of colocation, equipment and rack space.

Johan Wouters, SVP Capacity Business Management, BICS, comments: "Remote peering offers all the benefits of peering without complex set up processes or heavy capital and operational costs. Our extensive network footprint, broad portfolio of wavelength services, the Marseilles cable landing station and support teams make our remote peering solution an effective way for agile communications providers to expand their networks quickly."

"With BICS we have added a valuable partner to our reseller ecosystem," says Mark Cooper, Chief Commercial Officer at AMS-IX. "As BICS owns an extensive and robust network throughout the world, parties now have an increased choice of access points to choose from, making it easier for them to remotely connect to AMS-IX in Amsterdam."

Established in the early 1990s, AMS-IX (Amsterdam Internet Exchange) is a neutral and independent Internet Exchange based in Amsterdam, the Netherlands. AMS-IX interconnects close to 650 IP networks and its business traffic has a peak of over 2.5 Terabit per second, making it the largest Internet Exchange in the world. The AMS-IX platform provides a professional, high quality, non-blocking peering service for all types of IP traffic, be it regular IP data such as email or web content, to also video/TV, voice and games. AMS-IX additionally hosts the first mobile peering points worldwide: the Global GPRS Roaming Exchange (GRX), the Mobile Data Exchange (MDX), and the first interconnection of IPX networks (Inter-IPX). AMS-IX deploys two Internet Exchanges abroad - AMS-IX Hong Kong in the Asia Pacific region and AMS-IX Caribbean on Curacao. Currently, the AMS-IX East Africa Exchange Point is being built in Mombasa, Kenya. AMS-IX's counterpart AMS-IX USA Inc. deploys AMS-IX New York in the United States.

BICS delivers best-in-class international wholesale solutions to any communication service provider worldwide. Through its Mosaic portfolio, a comprehensive, flexible and innovative suite of solutions designed to be used individually, or collectively, BICS meets the existing and future requirements of the global telecoms industry.

BICS' headquarter is located in Brussels with regional offices in Bern, Dubai, New York and Singapore. We also have a satellite office in Beijing and local representation in Accra, Cape Town, Miami, Montevideo, Nairobi and Toronto. Our team continuously strives to provide our customers with the highest levels of quality, reliability and interoperability enabling them to maximise their end-user value.

With our successful consolidation strategy, and a continuing focus on technological advancement and innovation, we have achieved a world-leading position in the international Voice and Mobile Data markets.